Hello Friend, Glad You’re Brewing

Hello Friend beers

I went to my neighborhood bottleshop today and noticed some new beers from a brewery I had never heard of called Hello Friend.

Normally I am too tight with my beer budget to risk trying something from new breweries, but today I had some rare cash to take chances with.

I look for beers with Mosaic hops first off and this brewery had several with Mosaic – if you’re a brewery that uses a lot of Mosaic you are already pulling me in, brother.

Over the past few days I have had four of their beers. One I forgot ??‍♂️, but the other three were:

  • I’ll At Ease.
  • Nothing’s Never Forever.
  • Till I Crumble.

If I had to choose my favorite of the four three… Till I Crumble. But they are all nice beers.

Come to find out this is a brewery operating out of Berkeley’s the Rare Barrel. They are on the property but have their own “area” I suppose.

I think it’s a good idea to make a separate brewery in your own brewery, if you want to make a different style beer with its own marketing.

If you are interested and in California, you can get their beer here.

Maybe A “Kinda Cool” Category Next Year For the Beer Writer Awards?

The results of the Beer Writer Awards are out and I can tell you that the blog you’re reading right now is nowhere near them.

I am not a long-form writing kind of guy so it makes sense that I have nothing even worth mentioning – as far as the North American Guild of Beer Writers is concerned anyway.

After reading through all the winners, one thing is clear: they looooove love love long articles.

Lots of words = good blogging.

Blog or newsletter creativeness? BORING! Long stories with puffy and fussy words? Sign NAGBW up!

Am I bitter and longing for acknowledgment? I don’t think so? Maybe subconsciously. But if I am being honest, I get inspired by lack of acknowledgment. Makes me want to post even more.

The NAGBW does have ONE category I would have a shot in: Short Form.

Appropriate that their short form category has the least amount of award winners: three.

Was three all the entries they had or do they just not respect that category enough to even bother posting more? ??‍♂️

Maybe next year I can convince them to create a “Kinda Cool” blog or newsletter category.

Anyway, like I said, I kind of get-off on the people considered the best in the field, not giving a shit or not aware enough to know what is happening on the small indie blogs.

When you’re a never-award-winning blogger and newsletter writer, sometimes being an unknown crank is all you have.